By JON KAPLAN
SummerWorks wraps up today, after a tiring but very enjoyable 11 days of theatre-making and theatre-going. Though there are fewer productions than in the Fringe, for many people the concentration of time spent in the theatre is just as high.
Some theatre artists have additional reasons for running around, especially those involved in several productions playing concurrently.
It’s a bit easier for a designer like Camellia Koo, for her work is over before the festival starts. She and Anna Treusch created the simple but effective picture-frame set for Mexico City/Yogyakarta, which crumbles progressively as the worlds of the two plays disintegrate. The award-winning Koo also designed set and costumes for Paper Series.
A number of lighting designers contributed to several shows, among them Kimberly Purtell (The Trial Of Thumbelina and Mexico City/Yogyakarta), Michael Walton (Offensive Shadows and Tijuana Cure), André du Toit (In Full Light and The White Bone), Rebecca Picherack (Appetite and Jasmine). But the busiest design person was Trevor Schwellnus, who was scenographer for Bird’s Eye View and did lights for The Source Of Gravity, Simply Told (with Ashlee Cowan) and Paper Series.
Directors also finish their work before a production opens, but you can often see them hovering like protective parents around a show that’s already up. Natasha Mytnowych did a terrific job with In Full Light and was co-director for the youth show I Think Of You, Erendira. One of her directing associates on the latter production was Beatriz Pizano, who you can see onstage in One Last.
Actors doing double duty have the most hurried — harried? — schedule during a festival, especially if they’re playing contrasting roles.
Take Ryan Hollyman, for instance, who has a tender though sometimes upsetting Beckett-like monologue at the end of A Thought In Three Parts. He also plays a randy, scat-focused gay man named Billygoat in Terminating today he has to do the pair of roles back to back, both in the Tarragon Mainspace.
That same run-from-one-show-to-the-next marathon happened twice last week for Brendan Gall, who plays a shy, amorous bird-watcher in In Full Light and a testy married man on a vacation south of the border in Mexico City.
But the winner of the I-can-be-in-two-places-almost-at-once Award goes to Gordon Bolan. On the first Saturday of SummerWorks he had a 6 pm performance of One Last at Factory, and then had to get over to the Diesel Playhouse for a 7 pm performance of the Fringe holdover Reesor. He barely took a curtain call for One Last before leaping onto his bike and racing over to the other theatre. Reesor went up a few minutes late, but the audience there understood why.
Apologies if I’ve inadvertently missed some two-timers at this year’s fest.
